Charismatic & Transformational leadership

Transformational leadership
The term Transformational leadership was coined by Downtown in 1973. A transformational leadership is a process that changes & transforms people. Its concerned with emotions, values, ethics, standards & long term goals. It includes assessing followers motives, satisfying their needs & treating them as full human beings. Transformational leadership involves an exceptional form of influence that moves followers to accomplish mote than what is usually expected of them. Its a process that often incorporates charismatic & visionary leadership. Transformational leadership serves to change the status quotient of an organization by articulating to followers the problems in the current system and a compelling vision of what a new organization could be. It is done my Motivating & encouraging the followers & employees of an organization. Transformational leaders take charisma one step further, in that they are more likely to go beyond the visionary stage into the action stage in an attempt to transform their organization. Focuses on what leaders accomplish rather than personal characteristics and follower reactions. E.g: Life of Ryan White, the teenager who raised the American peoples awareness about AIDS & in the process he became a spokesperson for increasing govt. support of AIDS research. A manager of an organization is also an transformational leader who tends to change the latter by fairness & justice. Saddam Hussain & Adolf Hitler were also transforming leaders, but in negative way(pseudo-transformational leadership). This refers to the leaders whore self-consumed, exploitive & power oriented with warped moral values. It(pseudo-transformational leadership) is considered personalized leadership, which focuses on leaders own interests rather than on the interests of the others.

Transformational leadership factors

Transformational leaders is concerned with improving the performance of the followers & developing followers to their fullest potential. People who exhibit transformational leadership often have a strong set of internal values & ideals & theyre effective at motivating followers to act in a ways that support the greater good than own self-interests. The four factors for transformational leadership are: Idealized Influence/Charisma: The leaders act as role models that followers seek to emulate. These leaders have very high standards of Moral & ethical conduct. Such leaders always win the trust and respect of their followers through their action. The use of power by such leaders is aimed at influencing them to strive for the common goals of the organization. Inspirational Motivation: The foundation of transformational leadership is the promotion of consistent vision, mission, and a set of values to the members. Transformational leaders guide followers by providing them with a sense of meaning and challenge. They work enthusiastically and optimistically to foster the spirit of teamwork and commitment. Intellectual Stimulation: Such leaders encourage their followers to be innovative and creative. They encourage new ideas from their followers and never criticize them publicly for the mistakes committed by them. The leaders focus on the what in problems and do not focus on the blaming part of it. Can discard old unfit practices. Individualized Consideration: Leaders act as mentors to their followers and reward them for creativity and innovation. The followers are treated differently according to their talents and knowledge. They are empowered to make decisions and are always provided with the needed support to implement their decisions. E.g: Mahatma Gandhi and B.Obama.

Strengths of Transformational leadership

1) Its a widely researched & implemented form of leadership in well-known organizations across the globe, including a series of prominent leaders & CEOs in large well known organizations. With its prime example includes Kimberly Clarke of Huggies, Ratan Tata of TATA Group of companies India & many more. With their great vision, mission & implementation of their ideas, they empowered the employees of their organization to achieve great heights in their business & as an Industrial leaders. 2) Transformational leaders exhibit some Intuitive appeal, which makes them to envision of the future prospects of their organization. 3) A Transformation leader treats leadership as a process which occurs between the followers & leaders. Followers come close to the leader to discuss their ideas, progress about their plans & prospects. 4) It provides broader view of leadership that augments other leadership models. 5) It pays strong emphasis on followers needs, values & morals & encourages them to work & progress together to achieve the goals for their organization. Burns(1978) suggested that transformational leadership involves attempts by leaders to move people to higher standards of moral responsibility. It includes motivating followers to transcend their own self-interests for the good of team, organization or community.

Primary characteristics of Transformational leaders:

1) Creative: A transformational leader has to be creative. He/she has to be creative enough to chalk out the new plans about his organization & towards the organizational goals. 2) Interactive: A transformational leader has to be interactive with his subordinates & his followers. His interaction with his followers is necessary to discuss the weaknesses of the system, tasks to be done & discuss many other ideas for the success of the system as a whole. 3) Visionary: A transformational leader has to be visionary to develop the future prospects & future goals for his organization & his leadership system. 4) Empowering: To succeed as a transformational leader, one need to involve other people & his followers into his leadership processes. A transformational leader empowers his followers or the members of his organization to actively participate into the organizational transformation. This can be done by empowering the followers to take some decisions for the processes which can make the organization a better place than before. 5) Passionate: A transformational leader has to be passionate enough to keep his ideas & processes upstream, which together help in bringing the organization as a better organization than before.

Charismatic leadership
Charisma:
As per Weber, a charisma is a Divinely inspired gift. A Charisma is a special personality characteristic that gives a person superhuman or exceptional powers & is reserved for a few, is of divine origin & results in the person being treated as a leader. Charisma is a necessary requirement of transformational leadership, but by itself is not sufficient to account for transformational process, i.e. all transformational leaders are charismatic, but not all charismatic leaders are transformational.

Charismatic leadership:
As per Houses Charismatic theory, Charismatic leaders act in unique ways, these include: Dominant. Strong desire to influence others. Self-confident. Having strong sense of ones own moral values. For House, the personality characteristics of a charismatic leader include being dominant, having a strong desire to influence others, being selfconfident & having strong sense of onws own moral values. In addition to displaying specific characteristics, charismatic leaders also demonstrate specific type of behaviours. 1) Theyre strong model for the beliefs & values they want their followers to adopt. e.g: Mahatma Gandhi advocated non-violence & was an exemplary role model of civil disobedience. 2) They appear competent to followers. 3) They articulate ideological goals that have moral overtones. Martin Luther king Jrs famous I Have a Dream speech is an example of type of charismatic behaviour. 4) Charismatic leaders communicate high expectations for followers & exhibit confidence in followers abilities to meet these expectations. 5) Charismatic leaders arouse task-relevant motives in followers that may include affiliation, power or esteem, as former U.S President John F.Kennedy did.

As per Attribution theory of Charismatic leadership given by Jay Conger & Rabindra Kanungo. Charisma lies in the eyes of beholder. A Charismatic leader possesses: Bold vision. Unconventional/Surprising manner. Self-sacrifice. Exudes Self-confidence & enthusiasm. Utilizes emotion to sell their ideas. Charismatic leaders doesnt have their followers, instead they creates fans or devotees. They do this by: Personal Identification of people: Transformational leaders personally approach their followers & motivate them for their tasks. Facilitating conditions: Charismatic leaders asks their followers to try to recapture the good old times, which led to the successful development of those followers. e.g: Le Iacocca told their engineers in Chrysler to recapture their old time & moments when they together successfully developed the iconic Ford Mustang, while working in Ford Motor Company.

Prime example of Modern day Charismatic leaders are: Steve Jobs, former-CEO of Apple, USA. Le Iacocca, former CEO of Chrysler corp, USA. These leaders have made their organizations transformed to do wonders, when they worked in them, churning huge profits & huge sales numbers.

Types of Charisma:
House & Howell studied it on the basis of Values & Personalities of the leaders & characterized them into: Positive Charismatic leaders. Negative Charismatic leaders.

1) Positive Charismatic leaders(Socialized Power Orientation) These are the leaders which are having positive charisma & they work for Socializing the power among his followers, rather than concentrating & restricting it to themselves only. They do this by: a) b) c) d) Internalization of values. Devotion to ideas(than on individuals). Sharing of knowledge(no hiding of facts/secrets). Participative or engaging decision making. e.g: Mahatama Gandhi.

2) Negative Charismatic leaders(Personalized Power orientation) These are the leaders which are having negative charismatic values & they try to concentrating the power for themselves only. They restrict it for themselves only & use it make others feel inferior tham them. They do this by: a) b) c) d) Always try to get People devoted to them. Garner power(which aims to keep the followers weak). Main aim to achieve Self-glorification. Sounds good for achieving Short-term goals. e.g: Adolf Hitler.